The aluminum fins are tightly packed together, making this a cooler which relies on higher airflow to perform adequately. The included 92mm fan spins at ~2100rpm and is not extremely silent, nor very loud.

The fan is mounted to the heatsink through the use of 4 ? push pins ? at the side. Swapping out the fan with a different 92mm model was extremely easy.

The base has visible traces of machine lapping but not unsmooth. Additional manual lapping will likely improve thermal performance slightly.
InstallationInstallation takes up very little time, the included clip works well with either S939 or AM2 bracket. Orientation of the heatsink is fixed to the orientation of your CPU socket.

On our motherboard the fan was pointing towards the rear, which is the ideal configuration.

Onto our test setup ->